Verdict Unsafe (22 page)

“Your usual conversational style?” asked Inspector Hill.

He twisted around again to look at her. “I smacked her, yes. And told her to get a pack of three from the toilets in the Ferrari. She tried to sponge some off Ginny—said I was making a fuss about nothing, because he couldn’t make her pregnant anyway. They think if they’re on the pill, they’re laughing. Christ, they’d all be HIV positive in five minutes if you let them.”

Finch shook his head, smiling. “The world would be a poorer place without you, Lennie,” he said.

“Anyway, she was mad at me because I’d clouted her, and that was the last time I saw her.”

“All right,” said Inspector Hill, opening the door. “You can get on with your work now, Lennie.”

“Hang on,” Lennie said. Very few people knew about him and Rosa. Ginny. Rosa herself. And Matt Burbidge. He’d grassed him up, the sod. Well, two could play at that game. “Matt Burbidge,” he said. “He used to be one of your lot. The one who gave Drummond a kicking?”

“What about him?”

“He came to see Ginny last night,” he said. “And told her to stick to her story. He seemed to think that she’d set Drummond up for the cops, and he didn’t want her telling anyone any different.” He looked at Inspector Hill. “And it was worth fifteen quid to him to tell her that in private,” he said.

It was the first time in his life Lennie had volunteered information to the police. Serve the bastard right for shopping him. He drove to Rob’s, picked him up and drove home, told Ginny she would be working the park again.

She knew better than to argue with him, but she complained. Just as loud, just as long. There was more custom tonight; he was working her even harder than he had last night. And she complained even harder. All bloody night.

MATT FINISHED WORK AT NINE O’CLOCK IN THE morning, and drove home to his empty house and his empty life. He had spent all night thinking about his visit from the police, wondering how much they knew, how much was guesswork. She was the last person he had expected to be on the reopened inquiry. He had assumed that she would be under investigation like all the others.

He had had no time to prepare, no ready answers, hadn’t even realized that that was why they were there until it was too late. The truth had had to do once or twice when Finch had fired the bullets that woman had made for him.

He read for a while; the morning paper, full of Drummond still because of the rape and murder. He tried to sleep, but the sunshine was distracting, and anyway every time he even looked like drifting off, someone would let off a firework. And his head was swimming with questions and answers and memories and regrets, and he just kept waking up again.

Finally, he got up and made himself some lunch. He wished Isabelle was here, and the kids. He remembered her horrified face when she found out; he had tried to explain, but it had been no use.

He was supposed to be sleeping. He had a long night ahead, and an even longer day tomorrow.

*   *   *

Rob waited until he heard the front door shut before he got up, not wanting to find himself having yet another discussion with Carole.

He hadn’t really slept; he was always a bit hyper if he had anything planned. In the army, they had laughed at him because he got so worked up before they went out on border patrol, or even maneuvers. At first, they had thought he was scared, but they had found out that it wasn’t that. It was anticipation, like a child on Christmas Eve. The mere fact that something was planned for a particular time made him want that time to come around.

He had thought that his visit to Ginny might relax him, but it hadn’t. And now he could feel the familiar restlessness; he wanted the day to hurry up and leave the sky to the darkness that he had grown accustomed to. He liked the night; he liked the solitude.

He made himself coffee, which would just make him more hyper, he knew, put on a CD, and plugged in the headphones. He would listen to loud music. That usually helped.

Lloyd read the reports of the morning’s endeavors. The house-to-house had turned up nothing more, but they hadn’t really expected it to; they had already got a great deal more from the residents than they usually did. But, as he moved through the reports, he discovered that none of it had been of much use. The taxi driver had turned out to be the husband of Mrs. Jarvis, the first of the previous rape victims, which had caused a bit of a stir. They had checked out the unlikely possibility of his having raped his own wife and everyone else, but it had proved to be an
impossibility
, much to everyone’s relief, He had been guarding some fortified police station in Northern Ireland when the first three rapes had been committed, sleeping, eating, and patrolling with a dozen other people twenty-four hours a day. And Marshall said that his story about his fare had checked out—his intended passenger had indeed been persuaded to stay the night by her host.

Unlike Judy, Lloyd thought. And last night, she had taken
the department out for a birthday drink; he had left early, the company of drunken police officers having never appealed. He had thought she might come up to the flat afterward, but she hadn’t.

And it could, of course, have been any of Stansfield’s many taxis which had been seen near the boating lake; it seemed possible to Marshall that Lloyd’s informant had merely seen the taxi leaving, and had thought mistakenly that the person leaving the clothes had got into it. Lloyd wasn’t so sure about that. He might have a word himself with Mr. Jarvis.

Judy had been to see Matt Burbidge, who had furnished them with details of where he had been between ten and eleven o’clock, which had been checked. He had been with Ginny Fredericks, and though Lennie Fredericks had indicated that this was not for the usual purposes, but rather to tell her to “stick to her story,” Judy was satisfied that he
was
there, and she was taking no further action. She had made a note to the effect that Burbidge had known of the prostitute Rosa’s existence, and had not made this known, due to resentment over his suspension and dismissal. This knowledge would not have helped trace her.

They were going through the motions, of course. No one seriously thought that Jarvis or Burbidge or anyone else had raped and murdered Marilyn Taylor. Drummond had, and Lloyd just had to keep his fingers firmly crossed about that one tiny piece of evidence that they might, just might, have found. The clothes that he had hoped to burn had indeed been worn during the assault on Marilyn Taylor, but forensics couldn’t tie them to Drummond; Lloyd was trying to trace their origins, but he had grave doubts about that yielding anything worthwhile.

The summons to Detective Chief Superintendent Case was one he could have done without; he went upstairs slowly, wishing for the first time ever that his senior officer was a thirty-year-old whiz kid with a degree in corporate strategy.

“Come!”

Lloyd went in; Case was writing something in one of the
files he always seemed to have on his desk, and didn’t look up. Lloyd sat down, without being invited to. He just let Case make something of it.

He looked up. “A bit of a bombshell from HQ,” he said.

“Oh?”

“It’s about DI Hill,” said Case. “She can’t be involved in either the murder or the reopened rape inquiry, at least for the moment.”

He didn’t look too cut up about it. Lloyd frowned. “Why?”

“It seems that Drummond’s made an official complaint about her conduct following his arrest.”

“But Judy wasn’t
at
Malworth when Drummond was arrested,” said Lloyd.

“She took a statement from him some hours afterward, though, didn’t she? That’s what his complaint concerns. I don’t know all the details, but I gather that she’ll be getting a visit from the complaints investigation team. They don’t seem too worried about it at HQ. They expect her to come out of it smelling of roses, apparently.”

Lloyd didn’t like the implication of that phrase, but he let that pass.

“In the meantime, as the subject of an official complaint, Inspector Hill can’t deal with anything touching on that same inquiry. I suggest that she replaces DS Sandwell on the burglaries, and frees him up for the murder team.” Case picked up another of his inevitable files.

“Right.” Lloyd sighed, getting up.

“You should have told me that DI Hill was ex-Malworth.”

Lloyd shrugged a little. “She was there for a few months,” he said. “Why should I have told you?”

“Because then I would have been forewarned. I wouldn’t have had her on the reopened inquiry in the first place, nor the murder. We’ve got to be whiter than white, if we’re going to get Drummond this time. Not give him the opportunity to cry foul again.”

Forewarned. Cry foul. The man was a moron. “Judy Hill is as straight as a die,” Lloyd said. “You have no cause for concern.”

“Oh, dear,” said Case. “Have you got a soft spot for her?”

“I know her,” said Lloyd. “You don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” said Case. “Which means that
I’m
not wearing blinkers. Practically every station in the county has got one of Malworth’s rotten apples—why should we be the exception?”

It was too ludicrous for Lloyd to get angry with him. It was really quite funny. “I can assure you that Judy Hill is not one of Malworth’s rotten apples,” he said, with a smile.

“Don’t be too sure, Lloyd. The jungle drums are beating. There’s a lot of rumor—a lot of speculation. One or two of the Malworth Mafia are choosing to cooperate with the inquiry, and her name’s come up more than once, I gather.”

Lloyd gave up. “If that’s all, sir,” he said.

“Oh—you do know the word, then?” Case opened the file. “Yes,” he said. “That’s all.”

Judy was back in her office; Lloyd relayed in its entirety what Case had said. She didn’t seem as startled as he had been. It was almost as though she had expected something like that.

“You don’t seem surprised,” he said.

“Drummond said there were better ways of screwing me,” she said. “I presume this is it.”

“Yes—but how can he? You did do everything by the book, didn’t you?” Judy was meticulous about procedure, except when she chose
not
to follow it to the letter, of course. “Did you call him names or something?”

The only other time Judy had been the subject of a complaint—that time informal—-it had been because she had told someone who made an unwelcome pass what, in mainly Anglo-Saxon, she thought of his suggestion as to how she should spend her evening.

She sat back and looked at him for a moment, then spoke slowly and carefully. “I went to Malworth police station,” she said. “I took a statement, someone typed it up, I took it back to Drummond, who read it, and signed it. I barely spoke to him. It was bad enough having to sit and listen to the little creep.”

“Then, as they say in all the best old British B movies, you’ve nothing to worry about, have you, sir?” said Lloyd. He smiled. “That means you’re guilty, of course.”

“As charged,” said Judy, with a little smile. “Perhaps I should get up to date on the burglaries,” she said.

“How do you want me to handle this with Bob and Alan?”

“Tell them.”

“Right. We’ll tell them now, shall we? They were both there last time I looked. Besides, I’d like to brief Bob on the murder inquiry.”

They walked into the CID room, where Bob Sandwell was using a computer with an expertise that Lloyd found baffling, and Alan Marshall was on the phone. When they completed their respective tasks, Lloyd told them the situation, and they laughed.

“Quite,” said Lloyd. “So let’s ignore that and get on with our work, shall we?”

“I had a thought about the burglaries just now,” said Marshall, pointing to the phone that he had just put down. He looked at Judy. “It was when I was checking up on the cabs,” he said. “It got me wondering how the burglary victims actually got to where they were leaving from, if you see what I mean. Coach stations, airports, whatever. So I did a bit of ringing around—I’ve only managed to contact two of them, but they did take cabs. Two different cab companies, but it seems they both belong to a sort of collective, and you can ring one number and get a cab belonging to someone else. So, in theory, they could all have got the same cab.”

“And I know which one,” said Judy, suddenly brightening up. “ABC Cabs.”

“Could you not have swapped her and the sergeant before, sir?”

Lloyd laughed. “Go on, then,” he said to Judy. “Amaze us.”

“Lennie Fredericks has suddenly got rich,” she said. “The house is bristling with things I don’t see how he can afford. And guess what he’s doing these days?” She smiled. “Driving for some outfit called ABC Cabs.” She picked up a pen. “Right,
DC Marshall, off you go and get a search warrant for this address.” She wrote it down on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

“A search warrant, ma’am? Will we get one, just on that?”

“Yes. Go to Peabody. He’s always available, and he signs anything. List everything from the three most recent burglaries, and tell him we have reason to believe that some of the items could be on these premises.”

Lloyd frowned a little. “Are you sure about this, Judy?” he asked.

“Yes. Lennie’s never worked a day in his life—I couldn’t imagine why he was driving a taxi. He’s also got a record of breaking and entering—and he was pretty neat and tidy, just like the current one.”

“I’m not convinced that constitutes reason to believe that there are stolen goods on the premises,” said Lloyd. This was exactly the sort of thing he meant. “You don’t want to give anyone else reason to complain.”

“Lennie would die sooner than complain. And he acquired his taxi-driving job last June,” said Judy. “He acquired the house about the same time. It’s full of exactly the sort of things that have been stolen. Lennie probably kept the best ones for himself—that’s how he got caught last time.”

Lloyd nodded. “All right,” he said. “It just about scrapes by. Though I doubt if anyone but Peabody would sign it,” he added.

Marshall went off in search of Mr. Peabody, and Lloyd and Sandwell went to what was now the murder room, for Lloyd to brief the night shift. It would seem very strange working without Judy, but Tom Finch was a reasonable substitute, and Sandwell could take over the murder room duties. Sandwell stood aside to let Lloyd go in first, and ducked automatically as he went through the door himself. That was Sandwell’s drawback, of course. He made Lloyd feel shorter than ever.